Day Zero - Project Due
It's fitting that this show, which is about the final day of my film
project for the Film program at CDIA at Boston University ends with a
lot of energy and emotion, because, up 'til now I've been holding it
in, quite well I think.
I wouldn't say I lost it, but it was close, it was more like clawing my
way back onto the cliff edge that I was sliding off. But I'm getting
ahead of myself.
I only want to say that over these past 4 weeks the excitement and fun
of editing and completing a film has completely leached away to
frustration, stomach gnawing stress and all other kinds of unpleasant
feelings due to having too much to do in way too little time. In the
end I have to confess to dreaming too big.
I'm not apologizing for that, nothing I've experienced so far will
change that about myself, but I have learned that I never want to do a
film this way again. We'll see if I can hold true to that promise.
Today was a race against time, right up to the wire to complete color
correction and titles - how many times have I talked about getting
those two things done.
I seem to have gotten on a rag about various features of Avid, GUI in
general, but Titles really took me for a beating. In the end I had to
bail on using titles in Avid and did something quickly in Final Cut
Pro. Don't do this at home, it's very, very painful and time consuming.
Bringing an exported Quicktime file from Avid into FCP requires that
you render the entire timeline and the titles will have to rendered
each time you tweak them. But it was necessary to meet the deadline. I
would be better to know how to use the tools within Avid. I'll let you
know how difficult that really is in the next few weeks, once my head
clears and I can approach learning it with a little more time.
I also plan to do a review of working in Avid, talking about the pros
and cons. I know that most people listening are not using Avid, maybe
not even using Final Cut Pro, but it is an industry standard tool, for
the present, and I would like to give the benefit of my experience, as
painful as it sometimes has been, so that you know where it sits in the
pantheon of NLE gods.
